Are You Lonesome Tonight?
We have just returned from a mind-boggling, eye-staggering, neverrrrrrrr-ending, bloody unbelievable, eight-week, 6 000-kilometre trip to the Australian Outback of northern Queensland. I am not a travel writer’s backside, so please excuse my unbalanced, oblong sentence.
How was it, you might ask? Well, I’m still collating the infinite collections of impressions driving around in my head. At a small town with a big pub called Boulia near the Northern Territory border, a sign pointed directly east and read, ‘Alice Springs, 1 000 kilometres, the world’s longest short cut’. (This would have been on a gutted track through the North Simpson Desert.)
On arrival back at Cape Town International Airport, I was once again overjoyed by our country’s haphazardness, happy beauty and sad brutality. However, a glance at a newspaper headline filled me with dread. It highlighted that Table Mountain National Park has almost become a no-go zone for tourists and advised that security guards should accompany hikers and climbers. My ‘Happysadland’ had become my, ‘Just-shake-your-head-land’.
I slowly shuffled my depression to the rather glamorous tourist information desk and asked in a gruff voice how our iconic World Heritage Site and top tourist attraction had become a no-go zone? The pretty informant kept her lovely smile stretched and then
